Withey: Parents should go easy on serving juice to their kids

Juice boxes are easy to serve to schoolchildren for lunch, but experts warn of high sugar content.

Photograph by: Walter Tychnowicz
, Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - Do you let your children drink root beer for breakfast? I should hope not.

Yet most parents are happy to plunk a glass of juice on the table next to Junior’s bowl of oatmeal.

The Canada Food Guide gives fruit juice the green light but Canadians’ attitudes toward juice needs to change, according to obesity expert Dr. Yoni Freedhoff. Drinking fruit juice is like drinking flat pop “with a smattering of nutrition,” he said recently in Edmonton.

That bad? Yup.

The nutrition in a glass of juice is pretty much equivalent to a glass of water with five teaspoons of sugar stirred in, Freedhoff said. The University of Ottawa family medicine professor, who directs the Bariatric Medical Institute, was speaking to the University of Alberta Health Law Institute. If only he could speak with every parent, too, impress upon them why juice needs a red-flag status.

Australia doesn’t put juice in a healthy eating category, he explained, because juice is empty calories, and this country shouldn’t either, especially given the prevalence of childhood obesity now. Yet our beloved Canada Food Guide (last updated in 2007) still says half a cup of juice is equivalent to a piece of fruit, with all its fibre, vitamins, minerals and nutrition, Freedhoff noted. The juice issue is one of many reasons why he’s a critic of our food guide.

Poor food choices are constantly pushed on parents, he said. Kid get chocolate milk when they won’t drink plain milk, for example. “But it’s like saying if kids won’t eat an apple, we should give them apple pie,” said Freedhoff.

Of course kids love juice. It’s flavourful, vibrant and, above all, sweet. And sure, those juice boxes are perfectly designed for easy transportation and consumption. He’s not saying no juice ever ever again. But moderation, people, moderation. This doc lets his kids have a little juice — max half a cup a day, and watered down.

- I find myself furious and frustrated on behalf of Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash. Last week a mystery man accused the Sesame Street star of having sex with a minor on gossip site TMZ, putting Clash’s whole career in jeopardy, only to recant the statement a day later, still anonymous. I was crushed when I read the initial headlines portraying Clash some sort of predator (among them, “Nookie Monster,” in the New York Post) and then plain mad when the accuser backtracked, his identity still anonymous.

Clash is incredibly gifted, as you’ll see in the documentary Being Elmo, and my heart broke for him watching this smear campaign unfold, then collapse. He is on leave from Sesame Street now. Meanwhile, The Smoking Gun website has identified the accuser as Sheldon Stephens, an aspiring model from Pennsylvania who’s been in trouble with the law before.

- And another thing. I’d like to point out that NOT every mother loves 50 Shades of Grey. Not every mother has read EL James’s erotic trilogy or even gives two hoots about it. You may find this hard to believe, given the humiliating term “mommy porn,” which in September made it into the online Collins Dictionary and was, in recent days, among the finalists in the Oxford English Dictionary’s annual word-of-the-year competition.

Seriously? The term is such a put-down. As though, once you’ve become a mom, you can no longer get your jollies in regular sorts of ways, no, you need a special genre of literature, something you can slip into your purse to satisfy your sexual needs (now ostensibly unmet, since you gave birth or adopted) while at the hair salon, or breastfeeding, or watching the kids’ soccer games. Good grief. I’m so grateful this phrase didn’t come out on top (pardon the innuendo) with the folks at OED. And what of daddy porn? Oh wait, hang on, that’s just porn.

- On a much more serious subject, women who plan to become mothers ought to be vigilant about the signs of depression not only after the baby is born, but before. Awareness is up about postpartum depression, or PPD, but have you heard of antepartum depression? Probably not. The mood disorder can strike as early as two weeks after gestation. The U.K.’s Royal College of Midwives and Netmums just did a small survey and found that more than a third of women who become depressed during their pregnancy have suicidal thoughts, but just one-fifth of them seek help from a family doctor, according to the BBC. The poll of 260 moms also found that women with antepartum depression are at greater risk of developing worsening mental health problems than women with postpartum depression.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.